Bracketology for my bro-in-law's birthday. He won.
Sent from my android device.
Our loyal friend left us on Saturday, November 27.
His life with us started and ended with a two-and-a-half hour car ride. In 1999 we picked up the 9-week old puppy in Fort Madison, IA and drove back to Pella with him on the arm rest. On that ride, we landed on his name, Cymon (pronounced “Simon”), named for our alma mater, the Iowa State Cyclones. This last Saturday, it was a trip back from Bettendorf, IA where we had just spent a family Thanksgiving; Cymon in the back riding with his “pack”.
He was our kid before kids. And when our two-legged ones started arriving he gladly welcomed them in.
After chewing through his lead in the first two minutes of obedience school, he earned “Most Improved” dog by the end. He went backpacking with us in Colorado and camping numerous times. In the winter, he loved chasing around his indestructible “Jolly Ball” through the snow (supposedly “indestructible”; he went through a couple). He loved people, always preferring to be in the room we were in, rather than outside chasing squirrels. He was a cuddler…in the winter at night time, as difficult as it is for an 80-pound dog to “sneak”, he would sneak into our bed and dive head first under the covers. He always greeted people with an object (a stick, a shoe, a toy); never damaging the thing, just to say, “Welcome! Is this something you would like?” His happy tail was an unstoppable force clearing off the coffee table when visitors were around. When we put on music and danced in the living room with the kids, he was beside himself and never knew what to do, so he would jump up with his front paws and do his best to participate in the event. His best trick was when we told him “Secret!” and he would run up to you and press his ear eagerly up to your mouth to hear words about either a treat or a walk or some other adventure.
He’d had a tough last year dealing with a large growth which had completely compressed his right lung. And in a place this weekend where he’s normally energized by the presence of two other yellow labs, his body inexplicably shut down. He even did his best to communicate to us—curling up under some bushes outside a number of times—letting us know that for him the battle had become too tough.
But during his last ride home, Cymon stoically approached his fate (pic included of the ride home, one of the few times he sat up on his last day).
They're in the dryer.
…my mom left us to go hang out in Heaven.
John 14:2-3, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
The picture was taken when my mom first met our first daughter, Riley, a year before my mom passed away. Toward the end, Riley brought some of the last smiles to my mom’s face at the hospital when my mom watched Riley learning to walk…and ironically, my mom was also struggling to walk.
The metastatic breast cancer that my mom had been fighting had moved to her brain and was limiting her in many ways. The last couple of months we experienced ever-dimming glimpses of my mom’s personality.
I still remember the last thing my mom said to me. A little over two weeks before her passing I spent most of the day on the floor working on a puzzle in my mom’s room. She said nothing. Different people would stop by and we would have conversations. Seemingly, my mom was just an observer. She did smile once when my sister and I laughed about my college ID picture that my mom never thought was funny. I had shaved a receding hairline for it.
But, as I was saying goodbye, something burst through the haze that hung over her efforts to communicate, and she uttered, “Thank you for coming” and smiled at me. The three of us in the room at the time, while internally amazed, for my mom’s sake all acted as if it were perfectly normal that she had just spoken…as if she had been participating in the conversation all along.
Two weeks later, we spent our Thanksgiving at the hospice. That Saturday, the battle was over.
